Biographies: Adin RANDALL, Eau Claire, Eau Claire Co., WI
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Kim Johnson 30 November 1999
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The beautiful city of Eau Claire clusters around the junction of the Chippewa
and Eau Claire rivers. These picturesque streams are not navigable and the
uninitiated instinctively asks: What cause a city to grow up at this place?
The answer is, the great lumber industry of the last half of the nineteenth
century, and that brings in the names of men -- men of the woods, the river
and the mill -- the sturdy pioneers. Among these was a carpenter, a man of
unusual energy and enterprise, a true pioneer, who saw so clearly the
possibilities of the site of Eau Claire that he stood upon the forest-lined
banks of the Chippewa and visioned the future city.
Adin Randall was born near Clarksville, Madison county, New York, October 12,
1829. School facilities were meager in those days and he had no great
opportunity to take advantage of even the little education obtainable. While
still a youth he learned the trade of carpenter and worked at it in New York
state until he was twenty-five years of age. In 1852 he married Clamenzia
Babcock, and in 1854 moved west and settled in Madison, Wis. There he became
a building contractor and made a little money, with which he bought an
interest in a saw mill in Eau Claire in the fall of 1855.
It was in that year that Mr. Randall first came to Eau Claire. Quickly he saw
the advantage of the location and, selling out his interest in the saw mill,
he moved his family here in the spring of 1856. For a short time he was
associated with Gage & Reed, but soon sold out his interest in the business
and purchased the land which is now the west side of the city of Eau Claire
south of Bridge street and between Half Moon lake and the Chippewa river.
This tract he had platted under the name f the city of Eau Claire, but it was
then, and for some time afterwards, known as Randall Town. This tract was
then covered with brush and stunted trees, and all this part of the state and
to the northward was primitive wilderness, but he talked Eau Claire to
everyone and sounded the praises of this location wherever and whenever
possible. He built a small planing mill at the foot of what is now Ninth
avenue, and he secured the right to operate a ferry on the Chippewa, between
the east and west sides.
Acting upon the faith which he had in the future of Eau Claire - a faith that
others now see realized - he began to anticipate the future city. To that
end he donated the land for Randall Park to the corporation and also the site
for the West Side cemetery. To the First Congregational church he gave the
land which that society still owns and occupies, and to the Methodist church
he donated half of the land which constitutes the present high school
grounds. He planned to build his own residence upon the attractive site where
the court house now stands, and he took pleasure in assuring the pessimists
that the west side would one day have street cars running along its
thoroughfares. But, standing amid the brush and trees, they could not see
the panorama that rose up before his time-penetrating eyes.
Few living can remember, but who has not read, of the period of hard times
that came to this country after the close of the Crimean war. Then, as now, a
European conflict brought a war tax to America, but then the tax was paid in
a different manner. A wave of depression swept over the country, money was
more than scarce, it was hardly obtainable, and Mr. Randall was one of the
thousands whose plans and hopes were shattered by the financial convulsions
that shook the very foundations of the West from 1857 to 1860. In order to
carry out his plans he had mortgaged the west side and being unable to meet
the claims of the mortgagees they took the property.
In 1860 he sold out his planing mill and went to Chippewa Falls. He remained
there but a short time, however, and then built a saw mill at Jim Falls, which
he ran for two years. Having sold that mill he purchased a grist mill at
Reed's Landing and made it over into a saw mill. This he operated until the
time of his death, which occurred in April, 1868, when he was but
thirty-nine years of age.
Notwithstanding his remarkable energy, his buoyant optimism and his
irrepressible spirit of enterprise, he never shared in the harvest of wealth
which he clearly saw was coming to Eau Claire, but he helped to sow the seed
for that harvest. His inclinations were entirely for business projects and
it is said that he started or suggested more enterprises than any other man
the city has known. He cared nothing for public life, yet when Eau Claire
county was erected by the legislature in 1856 he was elected the first county
treasurer.
He is described as a man of cheerful disposition and undaunted courage.
Disaster could not crush him, and when it came he continued to work with an
ardor and energy that were the admiration of his friends. He was revered by
his family and he will always live in the hearts of the workingmen, with whom
he was a great favorite. A mechanic himself, he took a personal interest in
their lives and affairs and liked to get their ideas on all matters pertaining
to their welfare. When the civil war broke out his employees and other
workingmen came to him and said they would form a company and go to the front
if he would be their captain. This he wished to do and was only hindered by
the fervent solicitations of his wife and children.
A handsome bronze statue commemorates Adin Randall in the park which he gave
to Eau Claire. The memorial was a gift to the city from Mr. O. H. Ingram,
and, unquestionably, is a tribute of high regard from a wonderfully successful
man to the memory of a truly remarkable one. But there is a legend in Eau
Claire which tells of a secondary reason for the erection of this statue. It
is said that when Mr. Ingram came to Eau Claire, in 1857, he was, at first,
disposed to return to Canada, where he had interests too promising to exchange
for the wilds of Wisconsin. But Mr. Randall talked to him of the advantages
of Eau Claire, took him up the Eau Claire river, showed him the vast forests
of pine, and ultimately persuaded him to locate here. If this be true, Mr.
Ingram would, naturally, hold him in kindly remembrance, and for this one act,
had he done nothing more, Adin Randall was worthy of perpetuity in Eau Claire,
for he secured to the city the greatest constructive business man the
community has ever known.
--Taken from "The History of Eau Claire County, 1914, Past & Present",
pages 839-842.